Frequency based imaging technologies such as ultrasound, radar, and sonar send and receive signals from transducers and determine the position and/or shape of an object, in part, by processing the reflections of the signals sent by the transducers, to create an image. Transducers may be part of a sequential array in which the acoustic beam is focused straight in front of the transducer, providing high sensitivity but a limited field of view, or a phased array in which each transducer sends an acoustic beam in a coordinated sequence, establishing a pattern of constructive interference that results in a beam at a set angle, allowing for a wider field of view.
Phased array transducers comprise multiple transducer elements which may be arranged in a variety of shapes including a strip (linear array), a ring (annular array), a circular matrix (circular array), conformal array, curved, or a more complex shape. Processing of the signals returned from the phased array may rely on an estimate of the values of parameters formed from available temporal and spatial information. The processing of the captured data and information assumes that the wavefield is generated by a finite number of signal sources and comprises information about signal parameters, characterizing and describing the sources.
Data from an array is generally communicated through a standard interface protocol from front end circuitry to a main central processing unit. However, any standard interface protocol has a maximum data rate at which it can receive and transmit data, and for any standard interface between front end circuitry and the main central processing unit, there is an array size which will produce data too quickly for that interface to receive and transmit. For example, a USB 3.0 is limited to a data transfer rate of about 5 billion bits per second. An array of 2,000 transducers sampling a 5 MHz signal at four times the signal frequency at a rate of 16 bits/second produces a peak data rate of 640 gigabits (Gb)/second, a rate which is 120 times faster than most current standard interfaces can handle. As phased arrays become more complex and/or the number of transducers per array increases, the amount and rate of data produced will correspondingly increase. There is therefore a need for means to efficiently receive and process data from an array and transmit the processed data at a rate that can be received and transmitted by an interface to produce an image with controlled data loss.